Walking into
the theater, holding those fragile 3D glasses mildly tight in my fists,
controlling my anxiety to look back at the screen which has already begun
the “age of extinction” saga, searching for my seat under the dim low-battery Smartphone
screen-light; I finally settled in my seat with determinedly crossed fingers-
not to fall as a bait for the disturbing ‘Micheal Bay’ian grand destructive
celluloid franchise. Habitually all the beginning s of Bay’s stories are very
effective, so is this one but I missed the transformers tittle on screen which
bothered me a bit. Leaving those petty unhappy things aside I was engrossed in
to the story world which begins in the suburbs of Texas. Story unfolds
gradually, letting the audience realize that Auto-bots which
were always the personification of humanity and altruism were actually put
on a hunt to make them extinct from the planet earth by the pseudo-patriotic
corporate minds. Fancy cars as in NFS-most wanted, race here and there with the
laudable camera angles hunting down the human-friendly Auto-bots, holding
their hands with other malignant alien troops.
Mark Wahlberg
(who plays Cade Yeager), a struggling scrap
collector, a confidently wannabe investor, an over protective dad of a hot
teenage daughter appears fighting every battle possible to make the ends meet
and make his daughter’s university dream a mere reality. One interesting part about
the characters in this movie is they appear fresh, fresh enough at least from
the regular stuff that Bay had been showcasing past few years in this Robotic
franchise. You don’t find a practical flirty dad, a crazy mom and the tiny Chihuahua who desperately
tries to fuck every possible thing in this universe (lol). Bay has succeeded to
an extent in cooking up the ‘Armegeddon’ic flavor in this attempt of his.
After
the mere introductions, the story begins when Mark finds a scrapped truck which
is later realized to be a transformer, precisely Optimus Prime.
The whole family which is now chased for fostering an anti-nationalist, a no
longer wanted hero (Optimus prime) by the sycophant CIA agents, slips away in
all the directions possible to evade the deadly hunt. Best thing that one would
admire in this installment was that the director’s vision was clear;
graphics were crisp and neat (when compared to the haze ones in the “dark
of the moon” at least). Micheal Bay seems to realize that too much of the
unnecessary extravagant graphics can spoil the beauty, content and the flavor
of the film. He now uses the CG in a clever manner, particularly speaking about
a scene when a car transforms to a robot he doesn’t concentrate on its
transformation, rather he jumps into another scene quickly with transforming
BGM playing behind which reveals deliberately that the car is not a car anymore.
So
the Autobots are now fighting for their existence from humans and the other
alien counterparts -“creators”. Apart from the regular alien combats director
has taken an unusual sci-fi turn introducing the hilarious Stanley Tucci (as
Joshuva), who played an alter ego of Steve Jobs, with the similar physique and
posters all around his office showcasing the neo-revolutionary metal instead of
an ipod or an iphone. The luxuriously complicated idea of cloning the
transformers, programming, transforming metal seems odd but it opens new gates
for the plot to traverse in intrigued directions. On a whole the story races
further when the Galvatron, a new age cloned transformer from Joshua’s company
KSI, goes wrong and retains the character of the badass Megatron. So humans,
creators (aliens) and megatron on the darker side where as Autobots and the
Yeager family on the brighter end deliberately fighting for the
existence of humanity, forms the crux of the story which sequentially leads to
the destructively choreographed solid 1 hr climax set in the streets of Hong
Kong. One thing I would really appreciate Micheal Bay is that he restricted
himself from making a purely insensible destructive climax; he rather tries to make it fairly a digestible one with
more human involvement. Previous installment “Dark of the moon” tends to fall
on the darker side because of it’s over usage of graphics and unwanted
catastrophes which would be a pain in the eyes and something else too while
watching. As the saying goes “too much of anything is bad”, Bay tends to trim
every unnecessary CG work in this film.
In the course of
trimming down the fancy yet trivial CG work, he greyed out on the human
emotions, where the dad- daughter relations goes in haze and stands out
unwanted in the never ending fiasco. The drama doesn’t drive well in the last
hour of the movie which would probably excite kids and other action lovers. It
certainly pricks every movie lover very deeply and remains to be one of the unapologetic mistakes often committed by Bay. Director cleverly leaves many open ends in the plot,
making his work extremely comfortable in taking off with the next part in
this critically humiliated franchise. Cinematographer has done a wonderful
job in this film, which becomes a crucial part upon earning some respect from
the viewers.
As the end
credits rolled, popping the leftover tomato cheese popcorn into my mouth , I
urged myself out of the theater with mixed feelings, one appreciating
the director upon his learning from the previous mistakes whereas
disappointed for making the fresh ones undeniably.
On
a whole Transformers stands out to be a mildly destructive, poor on
drama, rich in CG and relentlessly another pain in the
ass installment of the franchise which would possibly never have
an EXTINCTION.
Go if your kids
force you or if you are this crazy fan of Robo-wrestling else stay back at home
if you are a skinflint, Bay might rob you for sure.
***************
A generous 2 star (**) for this movie for making me happy for a while, "if
this doesn’t kill you it might torture you" ****************
